Mac Vs Windows

[ashhong]

I would say it is not quite possible to get a macbook pro for less than 2k. for a macbook pro to be less than 2k, it would only have 256gb ssd and that is really little to work with if you don't want to bring around a external hdd.

personally i got the 512gb ssd with 16gb ram, that about 2.6k

if i need to run windows, i mainly do it via bootcamp as i prefer native over vm.

i don't game or do hardcore graphic design so not having a graphic card is not a problem to me.

the pricing for asus looks really attractive but i won't get it because I prefer macOS (don't get me wrong, i like windows too, in fact i did some of my coding stuff on windows.). mac is kind of best of both world since it runs both OS if you using iOS device, the additional integration is good to have.

 

[davidktw]

Running of OS virtualisation softwares are usually reserved for lightweight activities, I wouldn't recommend "gaming" in such a way. You might be able to get away with playing classic games from the 80's or 90's by running DOSbox emulator that doesn't require a separate OS.

I'm a long time Mac user and also a long time DOS and Windows user. I was no longer a gamer since my JC days, and that was before 2000. But I think we can really give more credits to Mac OS for the gaming experiences with good virtualisation software like VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop.

The performance for gaming on a virtualised environment isn't that bad to the point where it is usable only with DOSbox emulation on classic oldies games.

I'm agreeable that Mac OS is not the most recommended OS for gaming since much of the gaming support are on Windows platform with optimised Nvidia Geforce or AMD ATI chipsets, but if you look at examples like

Do they look classic to you ? Certainly don't look that way to me

Surely it didn't feel that bad for gaming experience in a virtual environment right ? I'm definitely sure the limits will not be able to push compared to a native Windows platform, but I am sure if the expectation is not to such a limit, the game seems fluid enough and playable in a virtualised environment which support DirectX10.1 and OpenGL2.1 3D emulation.

 

[davidktw]

It's read-only both ways.

Using Parallels Desktop, Mac OS X disks and folders are made sharable and writable inside the Windows guest with Parallels Tools installed. My Windows guests don't normally store my user contents, just the OS and Applications binaries and configurations. I don't even need my dropbox client installed in Windows if my files are synchronised with Dropbox. Just have the dropbox client installed in Mac and share the dropbox folder into Windows. Hence with sharing of folders and disks from the Mac OS using Parallels Desktop, your Windows guest will be just a plain platform which you can snapshot and move between different snapshots easily, best situation for if you want to test out new applications and development.

 

[Piezoq]

Yup. It's a good testing and development environment. What if the use case is 50-50 windows Mac?

Say I need to run MATLAB on windows, and Photoshop on Mac. Parallels? Don't think it'll work well unless they're trivial simulations. I've seen complex excel worksheets accessing datasets fail in parallels. And that's with a 16gb machine. I've also seen windows updates fail.

Parallels is a good solution for many use cases. But it's not a miracle pill.

Using Parallels Desktop, Mac OS X disks and folders are made sharable and writable inside the Windows guest with Parallels Tools installed. My Windows guests don't normally store my user contents, just the OS and Applications binaries and configurations. I don't even need my dropbox client installed in Windows if my files are synchronised with Dropbox. Just have the dropbox client installed in Mac and share the dropbox folder into Windows. Hence with sharing of folders and disks from the Mac OS using Parallels Desktop, your Windows guest will be just a plain platform which you can snapshot and move between different snapshots easily, best situation for if you want to test out new applications and development.

 

[davidktw]

Yup. It's a good testing and development environment. What if the use case is 50-50 windows Mac?

Say I need to run MATLAB on windows, and Photoshop on Mac. Parallels? Don't think it'll work well unless they're trivial simulations. I've seen complex excel worksheets accessing datasets fail in parallels. And that's with a 16gb machine. I've also seen windows updates fail.

Parallels is a good solution for many use cases. But it's not a miracle pill.

Nothing is 100%. I'm sure eventually you will find certain software that have requirements that doesn't fit into a machine which you have previously spec'ed.

I don't know what spec'ed of the machine that you are on and what version of the Parallels Desktop that you are using that resulted in the failed scenarios that you have provided. I have in totality of 3 different OSes on top of the Mac OS Maverick, 1x Windows XP, 1x Ubuntu Server, 1x Mac OS X El Capitan all at once and they are pretty functional albeit slower.

My laptop is an old Macbook Pro 17"(2009) on 8GB, 3.06Ghz Core 2 Dual on a Samsung Evo 840 512GB system.

I don't think your Windows updates must be attributed to Parallels Desktop. Can you be absolutely sure it is not because the state at which the Windows guest that contributed to the failure, and not because it is running on Parallels Desktop ? Not to isolate that a hypervisor can contribute to such an issue, but so many years I have been using Parallels Desktop(since version 3, to now version 11), from Windows XP till to Windows 10, even Windows Servers, Linux on Ubuntu, Redhat, CoreOS and more, even Mac OS. None of them have shown any updates failure except performance slowness at most.

As for your complex excel worksheet, what kind of failures did you encountered. What is the size at which they failed ? Can you at least be specific so that we can have a better assessment ?

If one requires the most performance from a machine, any virtualise scenarios doesn't fit in, but the question here is across the board, how much of the use cases that claimed to failed are indeed purely due to virtualisation and not because of something else ? Compared to the benefits you can reap from a virtualise environment, would such edge cases be acceptable ?

BTW I would also like the audiences to take a better look into situations when one experience slowness in a machine. Take a look at benchmarks done on the latest VM hypervisors

For eg:
https://www.tekrevue.com/2015-vm-benchmarks-parallels-11-vs-fusion-8/9/

This is a benchmark on Handbrake across bootcamp, a native installation of Windows and with all other VM hypervisors. Besides Virtualbox which is not the most optimised solution, you find both VMWare fusion and Parallels Desktop, trailing behind bootcamp just marginally. The benchmark CPU bounded. That is to say when it comes to raw computing power, today's VM hypervisors are very optimised and the overhead is very low. Most of the time, the slowness are in the graphical department which trails with approximately 40% overhead for Parallels Desktop and marginal for VMWare Fusion. If 3D graphical performance in the guest is what you need, you can choose VMWare Fusion instead.
Source: https://www.tekrevue.com/2015-vm-benchmarks-parallels-11-vs-fusion-8/5/
https://www.tekrevue.com/2015-vm-benchmarks-parallels-11-vs-fusion-8/5/

When it comes to office suite, it is roughly a 15% overhead. Productivity tools normally don't require much cpu resources, albeit I notice they are more and more graphically hungry especially with the most recent version of M$ Office.

With the earlier example you have provided, photoshop in mac and matlab in windows. The former is largely graphical intensive (less the filters which are mostly CPU intensive), running in Mac will be fine. Your MATLAB should be cpu intensive instead of graphical, so with marginal fall back, it shouldn't be that bad running in a VM guest. That is to say, if you reach system bottleneck with these 2 combination, it will most likely make little differences even if both are running on native Windows platform.

 

[Piezoq]

Perhaps you misunderstand me. I've already said parallels is useful for many use cases. It is a good product but there are some professional software used by tertiary students that do not work well in a parallels environment. I've only provided several personal anecdotes for illustration.

If heavy computing is required, it's best to go native.

 

[davidktw]

Perhaps you misunderstand me. I've already said parallels is useful for many use cases. It is a good product but there are some professional software used by tertiary students that do not work well in a parallels environment. I've only provided several personal anecdotes for illustration.

If heavy computing is required, it's best to go native.

I understand where you are coming from. But if we want to make good assessment, it is better we assess it properly instead of just a matter of gut feelings. The numbers in the benchmark doesn't says otherwise. Everyone can says there are overheads, but how much ? 5%, 10%, or 50% ?

Native is not always perceived faster. If I give you a finding that Windows boot up faster in VM than actual machine, it certainly contradicts with common sense, why should something running in a VM ends up faster ? What we want to really assess at the end of the day is "Why" and "What" and "Where" ? Just for reading: https://www.quora.com/How-can-a-Windows-Virtual-machine-boot-faster-than-Windows-on-the-host.

Likewise here, if the benchmark shows the disadvantage when running in highly optimised hypervisor only incur less than 5% margin of overhead, then clearly the benefits that one could reap from a virtualise environment with snapshots, flexibility in resources management, and different hosting environments would result in more pros than cons.

Today there are multitude of enterprise class server applications all running on vmware, xen, or even out in the cloud. It doesn't take much common sense to know they ought to run slower due to the overhead of virtualisation. So what makes the move of using virtualise environments or containers like dockers and/or LXC make sense right ?

All that I will say is, one can choose dedicated hosting for performance, or make do with some minor performance lost, but better flexibility. The choices are there for choosing

 

[Piezoq]

It's not guts here. I have seen parallels and wine/crossover fail in the wild. And I believe it's not solely a matter of processor overhead. The processor penalty is just one part of the equation. Memory and comms bandwidth is another. Less talked about is the filesystem virtualization. If multiple files need to be accessed and written to, things slow down very quickly. Bottom line, virtualization can break down in specific use cases. The question is, do you run into such brick walls?

Let me qualify that I find virtualization very useful sometimes. Convenience is one. But the disk space penalty with win 10 is rather prohibitive with today's ssd.

 

[davidktw]

It's not guts here. I have seen parallels and wine/crossover fail in the wild. And I believe it's not solely a matter of processor overhead. The processor penalty is just one part of the equation. Memory and comms bandwidth is another. Less talked about is the filesystem virtualization. If multiple files need to be accessed and written to, things slow down very quickly. Bottom line, virtualization can break down in specific use cases. The question is, do you run into such brick walls?

Let me qualify that I find virtualization very useful sometimes. Convenience is one. But the disk space penalty with win 10 is rather prohibitive with today's ssd.

Well for one whom has been using virtual environments for years, earlier versions till now with Parallels Desktop, I have not observe failures you have mentioned. I have run Oracle DB(Linux) on them, Visual Studio(Windows) at times, Java applications(Windows/Linux), Web Servers(Linux/Windows), Office tools (Windows), even Xcode(EL Capitian Mac OS guest), I must say I have never come across the problem you mentioned. None of the windows updates may it be XP, Linux, Mac guests have failed because using a VM hypervisor.

With Wine/Crossover, they are not virtualisation technologies. They are merely a system of libraries reimplementing the Win32 API, hence Win32 dependent applications can run on top of the native *nix environment. Hence I wouldn't comment on it knowing application compliance are short-listed.

I can agree with the lower performance for filesystems, memory and commons bandwidth. So lets find out how slow we are talking about ? Looking at https://www.tekrevue.com/2015-vm-benchmarks-parallels-11-vs-fusion-8/

I must say the performance degradation is not really that bad. The most degradation from both VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop are roughly 15% using Passmark, while using Geekbench 3, the scores are pretty close to native, read at https://www.tekrevue.com/2015-vm-benchmarks-parallels-11-vs-fusion-8/3/.

So what we have not really been able to tell are filesystems and network bandwidth, which will require some testing to find out.

What I'm agreeable on is similar fashion to you that virtualization is not the silver bullet to all scenarios. However I must say unless you are telling me for more than 50% of the course work done depends on a full performance squeezed from your daily gear, then don't choose the virtualisation technique. If real performance are really required, feel free to obtain them readily from cloud providers like AWS. Not every experiments need to be running inside the laptop, isn't it ?

So for the SSD requirements, I see it more like how much your budget allows, not really a technical factor. Laptops having 256GB to 512GB of SSD is not uncommon nowadays. I don't understand how your Windows 10 with Office suite (in my case just roughly 30GB) is too much to accomodate within a 256GB SSD. But well to each own, your gears and you get to decide what you go for

 

[Piezoq]

It's funny how this thread has evolved. Why would anyone install windows just for the office suite when there's a native mac version? Parallels or its equivalents cost money too, not to mention windows os.

30gb just for that? And what else can we do in that workspace? Browse the net?

(It's not just 30 GB isn't it? For one, the major win 10 updates require 20 to 25 GB of disk space. Note that windows tend to grow in size with each update.)

Add a couple of pro tools like AutoCAD, femlab, Mathematica or MATLAB and the numbers bump up 10 to 20 gb easily. Plenty of disk hungry tools in the wild, like video or graphic editors etc.

Take the shared use lappie in my house. Windows only. No pro tools. No office. Running libreoffice and a variety of common programs like skype, browsers the like. The c partition is more than 70gb after the recent redstone update. It was close to 50gb before. I can reclaim the space with disk cleanup but my option to rollback disappears.

Factor in media and personal files and one quickly runs out of space. How much does a 512gb mac pro cost? Yup, rather prohibitive.

 

[davidktw]

It's funny how this thread has evolved. Why would anyone install windows just for the office suite when there's a native mac version? Parallels or its equivalents cost money too, not to mention windows os.

30gb just for that? And what else can we do in that workspace? Browse the net?

(It's not just 30 GB isn't it? For one, the major win 10 updates require 20 to 25 GB of disk space. Note that windows tend to grow in size with each update.)

Add a couple of pro tools like AutoCAD, femlab, Mathematica or MATLAB and the numbers bump up 10 to 20 gb easily. Plenty of disk hungry tools in the wild, like video or graphic editors etc.

Take the shared use lappie in my house. Windows only. No pro tools. No office. Running libreoffice and a variety of common programs like skype, browsers the like. The c partition is more than 70gb after the recent redstone update. It was close to 50gb before. I can reclaim the space with disk cleanup but my option to rollback disappears.

Factor in media and personal files and one quickly runs out of space. How much does a 512gb mac pro cost? Yup, rather prohibitive.

That is because the Office found in Mac even for the latest version is not the same as the one found in M$ Windows. When I'm doing my work, I embed vector graphics using EMF or WMF. There are also times I need to use OLE and work with M$ Visio or M$ Project. Otherwise for most of the stuffs, I can make do with my Mac Office too. Feel free to read up https://9to5mac.com/2016/01/21/windows-mac-ipad-microsoft-office-comparison/

Most of my needs with the Windows platform is just Office and testing out some tools, debugging on Windows platform. I don't do it for gaming and for any more serious stuffs, I just start up a Windows Server or other possible OSes and offload to AWS. Even for some small little hobby projects like photogrammetry to 3D models which utilises 6x 32cores Windows Servers.

As for my Windows platform, I don't store user generated contents in it. All it host is just Applications and configurations. Most of what I need in my work and hobby, I can easily use them with the Macintosh. I uses Final Cut Pro X, Photoshop, XCode, and tons of development related tools all in Mac.

We are referring to Macbook Pro here, not Mac Pro. That's a totally different beast.

A Macbook Pro 13" with 512GB cost $2.3K.
If you own a Macbook Pro 13" which can still put in an external SSD, the Samsung 850 Evo 500GB is merely USD156=~SGD212.
A Macbook Pro 15" with 512GB PCIe is around $3.2K

It might not be affordable to everyone, but I seriously don't call it prohibitively expensive for a lot of people whom can spend no less for a desktop with a highly decorated GPU.

Not every piece of software requires GBs of footprint to be useful, and at the same time demands large amount of resources from the system.

 

[ashhong]

It's funny how this thread has evolved. Why would anyone install windows just for the office suite when there's a native mac version? Parallels or its equivalents cost money too, not to mention windows os.

30gb just for that? And what else can we do in that workspace? Browse the net?

(It's not just 30 GB isn't it? For one, the major win 10 updates require 20 to 25 GB of disk space. Note that windows tend to grow in size with each update.)

Add a couple of pro tools like AutoCAD, femlab, Mathematica or MATLAB and the numbers bump up 10 to 20 gb easily. Plenty of disk hungry tools in the wild, like video or graphic editors etc.

Take the shared use lappie in my house. Windows only. No pro tools. No office. Running libreoffice and a variety of common programs like skype, browsers the like. The c partition is more than 70gb after the recent redstone update. It was close to 50gb before. I can reclaim the space with disk cleanup but my option to rollback disappears.

Factor in media and personal files and one quickly runs out of space. How much does a 512gb mac pro cost? Yup, rather prohibitive.

the office for mac is still very far behind the windows version.

The below are just 4 of the many reasons why windows version is better than mac version. And yes, I do install Windows to use office if whatever I am doing is too inefficient on the mac
1) I can't even insert a simple table in Outlook for Mac, I had to go over and create in Word and then paste it in Outlook. Outlook for Windows can do it natively.

not being able to create a table natively is extremely annoying.

2) Can't request for read receipt in Outlook for Mac.

3) Archive only works if you are using Exchange 2016.

 

[BirdbrainZ]

Aren't we drifting away from the thread topic?

The TS is basically trying to decide between getting the Asus UX310UQ vs the possible upcoming new MBP (Q4 2016), and his uses are split between his studies and what I'd assume to be some gaming on STEAM. I honestly think a MS OS based laptop would be more suited for his needs than an OSX based laptop, if we take into consideration value for money and ease of achieving what he wants to do with it.

My laptop usage will be for minor video editing, photoshop and a little bit of design (my course is Communication Studies) but i would also like to continue playing my STEAM Games.

Would running a parallel OS on a mac be significantly slower for PC games.

 

[Piezoq]

Yup I was referring to a mac book pro.

I fear I'm just flogging a corpse here. There are many happy virtualization users, including you. However, I'd say you're primarily a mac user with some need for windows programs. Nothing heavy on either os since you're perfectly happy with a 2009 machine with 8gb ram. Great ux for you.

But there are plenty of use cases out there that don't fit this pattern, including mine. I'm not suggesting your experiencE is invalid, just there is another side to the coin.

As for ms office, I had assumed a more casual usage. I'm aware excel has problems with VB on osx but that's for the pros. I expect people with such skill sets will either boot camp a mac or get a proper windows machine. It's very odd people will go to such lengths just for virtual office in osx. That's hundreds of dollars and a huge chunk of disk space. But that's just me.

I didn't know mac office is still so bad though. Many years ago I used the first version of mac office on a crt mac. I remember being rather shocked that cut and paste from the browser resulted in missing pictures and horrible formatting. Some things are still broken, I figure.

 

[trento]

i saw the youtube on BF4 for Mbp. really cannot la. 30+ max FPS is really not good enough for FPS games. maybe it's ok for games like Tomb Raider. But if yr an avid gamer, especially into more demanding games, don't get a mac.

im a mac user myself. mainly for productivity. i game on my win desktop. But windows laptops these days are good for gaming intensively too, with a nice price tag of cos.

 

[trento]

Aren't we drifting away from the thread topic?

The TS is basically trying to decide between getting the Asus UX310UQ vs the possible upcoming new MBP (Q4 2016), and his uses are split between his studies and what I'd assume to be some gaming on STEAM. I honestly think a MS OS based laptop would be more suited for his needs than an OSX based laptop, if we take into consideration value for money and ease of achieving what he wants to do with it.

did he say what Steam games he play? if it's high fps type, the asus also won't cut it.

 

[davidktw]

Yup I was referring to a mac book pro.

I fear I'm just flogging a corpse here. There are many happy virtualization users, including you. However, I'd say you're primarily a mac user with some need for windows programs. Nothing heavy on either os since you're perfectly happy with a 2009 machine with 8gb ram. Great ux for you.

But there are plenty of use cases out there that don't fit this pattern, including mine. I'm not suggesting your experiencE is invalid, just there is another side to the coin.

As for ms office, I had assumed a more casual usage. I'm aware excel has problems with VB on osx but that's for the pros. I expect people with such skill sets will either boot camp a mac or get a proper windows machine. It's very odd people will go to such lengths just for virtual office in osx. That's hundreds of dollars and a huge chunk of disk space. But that's just me.

I didn't know mac office is still so bad though. Many years ago I used the first version of mac office on a crt mac. I remember being rather shocked that cut and paste from the browser resulted in missing pictures and horrible formatting. Some things are still broken, I figure.

Nothing heavy on either OS? well if that is really what you feel. But that is alright since it will be hard to tell u how at times i max out the dual core of the machine, doing kernel compilations and video encoding, running oracle databases, setting up development platforms with clustering and so forth.

But one thing you are right, those are my use cases. Looking backwards into a decade, those working with super computers in the past are doing nothing heavy too since most people nowadays are doing nothing that heavy with their smartphones today, having today smartphones are like a couple of times faster than some super computers that occupied a room size. It wonder how it come to your conclusion just because I am using a 2009 macbook pro with 8GB means it has to be nothing heavy.

Heavy fitting of work doesn't has to be confined within a single system, if you really knows how distributed computing works. In the past, i distribute my works to a 10K worth of machine still lying around in my living room with H/W RAID card across 5x 10Krpm HDD with 24GB of memory, on 2x Xeon CPU, installed with a Quadro Nvidia card, running on Windows Server with VMWARE workstation. These days I just don't bother when I can spin up instances of Windows/Linux easily in AWS, and managing them are way more flexible. My MBP no longer need to do all the hard work, it only plays a coordinator and development platform.

 

[Piezoq]

Nothing heavy on either OS? well if that is really what you feel. But that is alright since it will be hard to tell u how at times i max out the dual core of the machine, doing kernel compilations and video encoding, running oracle databases, setting up development platforms with clustering and so forth.

But one thing you are right, those are my use cases. Looking backwards into a decade, those working with super computers in the past are doing nothing heavy too since most people nowadays are doing nothing that heavy with their smartphones today, having today smartphones are like a couple of times faster than some super computers that occupied a room size. It wonder how it come to your conclusion just because I am using a 2009 macbook pro with 8GB means it has to be nothing heavy.

Heavy fitting of work doesn't has to be confined within a single system, if you really knows how distributed computing works. In the past, i distribute my works to a 10K worth of machine still lying around in my living room with H/W RAID card across 5x 10Krpm HDD with 24GB of memory, on 2x Xeon CPU, installed with a Quadro Nvidia card, running on Windows Server with VMWARE workstation. These days I just don't bother when I can spin up instances of Windows/Linux easily in AWS, and managing them are way more flexible. My MBP no longer need to do all the hard work, it only plays a coordinator and development platform.

I figure you're a programmer or developer then. Perhaps this will give some context to my previous comment.

What I mean by horsepower is workstation class power on the frontend (like a Dell M or Lenovo W series for portables and a Mac Pro or the HP Z series for desktops) and supercomputing clusters on the backend. Any Macbook pro of any vintage is prosumer at best.

Let's just put it this way. Even a top end 2016 32gb Dell M will struggle with some of the things people throw at it.

And yes, I'm aware of distributed computing. I was around 1000+ cores machines too long not to notice.

What matters is you have a machine that fits your needs.

 

[davidktw]

I figure you're a programmer or developer then. Perhaps this will give some context to my previous comment.

What I mean by horsepower is workstation class power on the frontend (like a Dell M or Lenovo W series for portables and a Mac Pro or the HP Z series for desktops) and supercomputing clusters on the backend. Any Macbook pro of any vintage is prosumer at best.

Let's just put it this way. Even a top end 2016 32gb Dell M will struggle with some of the things people throw at it.

And yes, I'm aware of distributed computing. I was around 1000+ cores machines too long not to notice.

What matters is you have a machine that fits your needs.

By that measure of what you have described, I think short of the Sunway TaihuLight, anything else would probably fall short isn't it ? I think the discussion here is not whether how powerful the Macbook Pro is to fit use case for it to grunt during heavy workload. It's all a matter of how much patience one has and what are the requirements for things to be churn out in the required timeframe.

On top of Macbook Pro, there is still the Mac Pro. But even 10x most expensive Mac Pro configuration probably can't compute the globe weather simulation in a timely fashion as required by some scientists.

As such, I seriously do not recognise how is it that virtualisation on a Macbook Pro means it is not good enough for heavy workload, or perhaps even if it will to be running on a shy of SGD14K Mac Pro, and still it will crawl on certain workload. The same applies to just about any 12-core Xeon configuration running Windows, Linux, or any OS.

Indeed what it matters is a machine that fits one's needs.

 

[Piezoq]

By that measure of what you have described, I think short of the Sunway TaihuLight, anything else would probably fall short isn't it ? I think the discussion here is not whether how powerful the Macbook Pro is to fit use case for it to grunt during heavy workload. It's all a matter of how much patience one has and what are the requirements for things to be churn out in the required timeframe.

On top of Macbook Pro, there is still the Mac Pro. But even 10x most expensive Mac Pro configuration probably can't compute the globe weather simulation in a timely fashion as required by some scientists.

As such, I seriously do not recognise how is it that virtualisation on a Macbook Pro means it is not good enough for heavy workload, or perhaps even if it will to be running on a shy of SGD14K Mac Pro, and still it will crawl on certain workload. The same applies to just about any 12-core Xeon configuration running Windows, Linux, or any OS.

Indeed what it matters is a machine that fits one's needs.

I don't know if you've taken my message in. Let me rehash.

I've seen (and caused) parallels and other virtualizations to break. They're a nono for some use cases. Just my personal experience in a different world.

Perhaps our definitions of "heavy workload" differ. Please don't take it personally. It wasn't a dig at you or your tools. Just different context.